Nicolo Bulega took pole position in WorldSBK’s Jerez Superpole, his final appearance in the session before moving to MotoGP. The advantage was substantial rather than marginal: Bulega was more than 0.4 seconds faster than Iker Lecuona in the season’s final qualifying session.

Lecuona had already scaled back his expectations of winning after Friday’s FP2. The bike felt better after Superpole, including on used tyres, but the front-running picture remained difficult for him. He described Bulega as being “in another world” at Jerez and also highlighted Sam Lowes as a fast rival. In Lecuona’s view, the three riders had formed a small leading group going into the race.

Lowes was positioned between Bulega’s and Lecuona’s factory Ducatis on the grid. His qualifying lap also had a place in WorldSBK’s Jerez record book: after Bulega, he became only the second rider in the championship’s history to lap the circuit faster than 1m37s. Lowes recorded a 1m36s lap, an achievement he said he was proud of, while adding that his pace had remained competitive on used tyres carried over from the previous day.

For Bulega, the result marked both a strong qualifying performance and the end of his WorldSBK Superpole chapter. He said he felt very good, thanked his team and hoped to remain fast. The more than four-tenths gap to Lecuona, combined with Lowes’s position between the two factory Ducatis, made the hierarchy at the front clear without reducing the three-rider group to a single one-bike story.